Rock and a Hard Place

[GrandGreen]

3 hours ago, emmitt01 said:

I’m not sure you visited other Sun Belt stadiums back then.  Better stadiums could be found in:

- Arkansas State

- Louisiana Lafayette

- New Mexico State

- Middle Tennessee 

- (arguably) Louisiana Monroe

- Troy when they joined

- Utah State when they joined

 

Fouts was bad.  
 

Like cricket infested bad.  

Like stairs that walked straight up to the press box bad.  

Like had to bring in generators just to turn on the lights for games bad.  

Like 30 yards from the FRONT row to the sideline bad.   

Like concrete covered by a very thin padding and then turf bad.  
 

Dickey recruited to facilities that were piss poor compared to most FCS programs.  

Well, I have been to a few of those stadiums and you are right they were better than Fouts.  

My point was and I will stick with it, is that NT football did not suffer in the early Belt because of facilities.  In fact, NT had a huge advantage over almost all the Belt schools because of their history versus mostly a bunch of startup programs. 

 

 

[Mike Jackson]

1 hour ago, GrandGreen said:

Well, I have been to a few of those stadiums and you are right they were better than Fouts.  

My point was and I will stick with it, is that NT football did not suffer in the early Belt because of facilities.  In fact, NT had a huge advantage over almost all the Belt schools because of their history versus mostly a bunch of startup programs. 

 

 

UTSA started from scratch basically and UAB had to restart their program.  So I don’t get what point you are trying to make.  I would argue SL has more advantages than Darell did.  Darell has trophies in the case and back to back NCAA season rushing leaders.  Minimize what he accomplished all you want but it been basically all mediocre to garbage since he was fired.  You can’t blame that all on a minimally tougher conference than the Sun Belt.  You could lower the standard just winning CUSA West and post Dickey we have been underwhelming and that is saying it in a nice a way possible.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Mike Jackson

[GrandGreen]

11 hours ago, Mike Jackson said:

UTSA started from scratch basically and UAB had to restart their program.  So I don’t get what point you are trying to make.  I would argue SL has more advantages than Darell did.  Darell has trophies in the case and back to back NCAA season rushing leaders.  Minimize what he accomplished all you want but it been basically all mediocre to garbage since he was fired.  You can’t blame that all on a minimally tougher conference than the Sun Belt.  You could lower the standard just winning CUSA West and post Dickey we have been underwhelming and that is saying it in a nice a way possible.

If you think current CUSA is only marginally better than the early Belt, there is no use in debate.  

Edited September 20, 2021 by GrandGreen

[El Paso Eagle]

22 hours ago, GrandGreen said:

Not sure I am minimizing anything.  If you think that the early Belt was only marginally better than current CUSA, then there is no use in discussing the point further.   

Anyone who thinks the Belt was the same has no sense of reality. At that time the belt was the worst collections of 1-A/FBS teams ever assembled. For all the crap I might give DD, he was smart enough to build a team that could succeed in the conference. 

Edited September 21, 2021 by El Paso Eagle

[Mike Jackson]

15 hours ago, El Paso Eagle said:

Anyone who thinks the Belt was the same has not sense of reality. At that time the belt was the worst collections of 1-A/FBS teams ever assembled. For all the crap I might give DD, he was smart enough to build a team that could succeed in the conference. 

Let’s just look at CUSA West and the state of their programs. UTSA-started from scratch Rice-bad, UTEP-bad, UAB-had to restart that leaves La Tech and Southern Miss as consistently competitively managed programs.  But neither are great.  Essentially just like the Sun Belt you had 2 teams to worth about.  Granted the 1st title UNT had in the conference I don’t even give DD credit for because we had a losing record.